Tomie DePaola's Book of Poems

Amazon.com: : In this engaging poetry collection, popular children's book illustrator Tomie dePaola succeeds again in creating cheerful, rib-tickling animal characters, from the renegade reptile in Eve Merriam's Alligator in the Escalator to the cavorting cats in T. S. Eliot's The Song of the Jellicles. This thoughtful selection of 86 poems--in a spacious, oversized format-- includes well-known works from William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and Frederico Garcia Lorca, with a sprinkling of haiku for good measure. Many youngsters are drawn to the simplicity of dePaola's art, which includes pictures of children of all races at home and at play. A great beginning poetry book. (Ages 4 to 8): : : From Publishers Weekly: : Like Tomie dePaola's Mother Goose , this most recent addition to the dePaola anthologies is thoughtfully compiled and organized. The opening poem, There is no frigate like a book by Emily Dickinson, prepares the way for the entries that follow, which take readers from the beginning of the day to the end, and all around the world. The first poems are morning poems such as The Way to Start a Day by Byrd Baylor and Time to Rise by Robert Louis Stevenson; these are followed by more general poems such as Bananas and Cream by David McCord and Mother to Son by Langston Hughes; at the end of the volume are evening or ending poems, which include Cat in Moonlight by Douglas Gibson, Autumn Leaves by Aileen Fisher and Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost. While dePaola's characteristic illustrations are beautifully executed, this collection lacks the luminescent quality so pervasive in both his earlier Favorite Nursery Tales and Christmas Carols . The theme of a day's passing doesn't prove, at least in this book, to be as compelling a basis on which to build a collection of poems. All ages. : Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.